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Nelson UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research XVII (2014) “Devils in the Wilderness”: The Character of Wilderness in American Horror Fiction Cole Nelson Faculty Sponsor: Kelly Sultzbach, Deparment of English ABSTRACT The concept of “wilderness” as a location and an idea has changed over time to fit different rhetorical purposes. This essay argues that while “wilderness” is used repeatedly throughout the American horror genre to explore cultural conceptions of marginal practices and ideologies, shifts in the implementation of “wilderness” in each text emphasize important changes in what concepts are considered marginal during that text’s period. This study examines how the concept of “wilderness” is utilized within the American horror story genre to explore the boundaries of society’s values by analyzing three texts through New Historicist, Marxist, and Ecocritical theories. These texts include the short story “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, the short story “The Dunwich Horror” by H. P. Lovecraft, and episode 22 of the contemporary podcast Welcome to Night Vale, titled “The Whispering Forest”. This study attempts to broaden our understanding of ecological descriptions, specifically within the horror genre, and to examine how studying these descriptions deepens our understanding of cultural attitudes towards social marginalization. INTRODUCTION As William Cronon states in his article, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, “[Wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation- indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history” (Cronon 1). Cronon was speaking of wilderness as a broad concept though, and tracked its general use throughout American history. As with any concept, however, “Wilderness” becomes even more complex when analyzed in specific uses. In the realm of American horror stories, for example, wilderness is a tool used by writers and authors in ways that deepen its use as a mirror for society. It is a marker for the culturally shunned, a playing field for experimentation with marginalized practices and beliefs, and a commentary on the mobility of society. To become such a multifaceted literary tool, “Wilderness” takes an active participation in the story. It does not act simply as a passive setting through which the plot runs its course. As Steven Greenblatt argues, culture functions as both “a structure of limits… [and] the regulator and guarantor of movement” (Greenblatt 439). Wilderness as a cultural symbol then must show both a shift in social understanding as well as mirror the constraints of that culture’s mentality. Such landmark authors as Washington Irving and H.P. Lovecraft have exemplified this use, and it has evolved to suit the needs of authors in every time period to date. In such works, nature not only becomes a symbol for what is outside society, but it also takes on a persona exemplifying that as well. As Richard Hardack writes in his book “Not Altogether Human”: Pantheism and the Dark Nature of the American Renaissance, “In some linguistic, sociological, political, and Lacanian terms, nature is the racial Other… When the repressed ‘not me’ returns… it is often coded as dark or black” (Hardack 67). “The Devil and Tom Walker” In his short story “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Washington Irving pulled heavily from his surroundings. His story is filled with natural scenes and imagery, and the most intensely described portion of the tale is not the city life of the main character but his early ventures into the dark swamp near his old home. These descriptions are written in such a way as to produce a certain kind of wilderness specific to Irving’s purpose. Irving sets his story in two locations: the original home of Tom Walker, surrounded by forest and swamp and described as a “land of famine” (Irving 356), and Boston, where Tom eventually sets up as a money-lender. There is a definite contrast between the writing of these two locations. In the former, Irving takes greater effort to describe the landscape, using everything from geography to the purported history passed down by European Americans. The focus in the wilderness is on Tom Walker’s movement through the swamp to meet the Devil. Conversely, in Boston Irving emphasizes Tom’s actions, focusing on his damnation through the practices of usury and hypocrisy. Nelson UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research XVII (2014) Irving does this not to point out the difference between the two locations, but to highlight their connection. In this American Faustian tale, Irving shows links of causation between actions in the city and choices in the wilderness. Tom Walker’s deal with the Devil in the swamp leads to his actions in the city, which in consequence lead to his permanent return to the swamp. The temptation Tom is led to in the swamp drives his dubious actions in the city. In this way, by sending Tom on an ultimately damning exploration of the physical margins of society, Irving is able to explore its philosophical and psychological margins as well. In his essay “The German Ideology”, Karl Marx wrote on the dependence of ideas on their material settings. As he put it, “The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material processes… Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Rivkin and Ryan 656). In short, our ideas and concepts are created by our physical situations. Irving’s “Wilderness” is no exception. It shows evidence of his physical and social reality even as it promotes his moral ideology. Taking a closer look at the descriptive details of the story, evidence of this exploration into the marginal appears very quickly. Tom himself lives on the outskirts of society, “in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone, and had an air of starvation” (Irving 355). Tom and his wife live in a location that mirrors their existence, for Irving later states that “The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name… Her [Tom’s wife] voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words” (Irving 356). Here already we have an example of irregular behavior, wherein the wife is not only equally hostile towards her husband but is also habitually physically aggressive towards him, taking on what would appear to be a more equal role in the patriarchal society of early America. However, this equality comes through violence, and it is important to note that this couple doesn’t live in the heart of urban America but on the outskirts of white society. The couple is not a happy one, and rather than being connected by love they are seemingly linked together by a shared “miserliness” and a desire to “cheat each other” out of whatever the other has (Irving 355). Theirs is a marriage of egoism, rather than union. Tom later begins a journey which is to lead him to his critical meeting with the Devil. Irving specifies that he takes this route as “a short cut homeward”, but that “like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route” (Irving 356). Tom’s “short cut” ends up being more difficult than expected, “full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black, smothering mud…” ( Irving 356). This aversion to “short cuts” exemplifies Irving’s cautionary attitude towards practices that focus on an individualistic mentality, practices which he depicts as dangerous and to be kept outside of society. Irving shapes wilderness in order to shape our perceptions of these practices and show their consequences. This is an act which Steven Greenblatt describes in his article “Culture”, in which he states, “Works of art are themselves educational tools. They do not merely passively reflect the prevailing ratio of mobility and constraint; they help to shape, articulate, and reproduce it through their own improvisatory intelligence.” (Greenblatt 439). With this understanding, Irving’s Wilderness now takes on an active role in the story, forming our understanding of the characters and their actions. Tom’s short cut eventually leads him to “one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists” (Irving 356). It is here that Tom meets “Old Scratch”, the Devil who bargains him into a life of usury and even greater greed. The fact that they meet in an abandoned Indian fort is an important one. The fort, once a center of Native American society, is now “gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees…” (Irving 356). This fort comes to symbolize the merger of Native American’s into a wilderness mythology of pre-colonial America. As a marginalized people in relation to the European colonist population, the Native Americans in Irving’s story become connected to a landscape on the edge of society. Since the European colonists had very little historical connection to the past of this new land, this place of native American history becomes marginalized as well into “the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil spirit” (Irving 357). This racializing of nature as “the Other” was noted earlier by Hardack, and represents how Irving is mirroring the constraint of his society. Irving’s devil phantoms are sublimates of his cultural understanding of his surroundings, just as Marx’s mental phantoms are a production of material processes and concerns, and the wilderness takes on an identity to personify those devils. This leads us to the description of Old Scratch.

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